Massacre at the Ice House
Khobar, Saudi Arabia To the average recreational hockey player, the Ice House at the Oasis 3 Compound in Khobar probably seems like any old beer league barn straight from the playbook of Anytown, Canada. However, for the collector and connoisseur of international hockey rinks, something about that place just didn’t seem right…
Twice a week the (mostly) Canadian guys on my compound take a 90 minute drive through the desert to Khobar, a very westernized city, that practically feels like another world compared to the place I have been calling home for that past 5 weeks. I have to say, it felt so weird to be out in public without my abaya (black robe) on. The guys are part of a compound hockey league that plays at one of the beautiful Oasis Resorts. This week I was invited to take part in the fantasy draft, which was to take place at Applebee’s following this morning’s game, so I got to be the resident compound puck bunny for the day, too.
As you know, I’ve been to a lot of arenas, both professional and recreational, and the rec rinks almost always feel the same. These are the community rinks that kids learn to skate on. The smell of the ice hasn’t been masked by the odors emitted from high priced concessions. Normally, when you walk through those doors, all you want to do is throw on a pair of skates or grab a cup of hot chocolate and warm up. But the Ice House doesn’t make you feel nostalgic. It doesn’t make you want to find the nearest stranger and brag about how you were once the fastest thing on two skates. The Ice House just sends deathly chills down your spine.
There was an eerie ambience all throughout the recreational complex, which also had a beautiful indoor pool, gym, and restaurant. I felt a little uneasy being down in the locker rooms, too. During the game, on more than one occasion, I could swear people were walking towards me from out of the corner of my eye. Of course, when I looked, no one was actually there. I didn’t think much of it until one of the guys had asked me if I had ever heard of the arena before, “Oh” he said. “Something bad happened here.”
On May 29, 2004, many of us in the western land of hockey were beginning to fret about the looming NHL lockout that was threatening to shake us to the very core. It seemed like nothing on the planet could compare to the villainy that was Bettman and the Owners. But in the unstable Middle East, at 7:30 that morning, the innocent residents of the Oasis 3 Compound were about to be terrorized by a very real evil.
That morning a full fledged attack was executed by a terrorist organization known as The Jerusalem Squadron. The group claimed to be attacking non-Muslim foreigners to stop them from coming to Saudi Arabia to “steal” oil and resources. It is said the terrorists asked each hostage to declare his or her religion, slitting the throats of anyone who wasn’t Muslim. 22 expatriates were killed that day, and 25 others were wounded. In the wake of the attack, the local morgue was too full to accommodate the bodies of both the victims and the attackers, so many of the bodies were actually stored in the Ice House itself.
The hallways of the Oasis Ice House are adorned with historical pictures of the in-house hockey team. Prior to 2004, the photos speak of a flourishing and large scale hockey program, but after the massacre the rosters immediately dropped down to nearly nothing. Understandably, many of the expatriates living on the Oasis 3 Compound fled the country shortly after the attack. It’s just incredibly sad to think that the two young children, who were among the slain, were likely just learning to skate, like we all had done at our respective childhood rinks, on that very ice before their lives were cut horribly short.